Lauren Bacall endures as link to Hollywood's golden age

Updated 3:54 pm, Wednesday, August 13, 2014

Lauren Bacall with onscreen and offscreen partner Humphrey Bogart at the Stork Club in New York. Their marriage lasted from 1945 until Bogart's death in 1957.

Lauren Bacall with onscreen and offscreen partner Humphrey Bogart at the Stork Club in New York. Their marriage lasted from 1945 until Bogart's death in 1957.

Photo: Associated Press

Lauren Bacall endures as link to Hollywood's golden age

1 / 1

Back to Gallery

Lauren Bacall, who died Tuesday at the age of 89, was one of the last great links to Hollywood's golden age. Truly a woman from another time, she did her most lasting work during the 1940s, before the age of 25. Then she proceeded to live into our era, seemingly as physically invincible as she was culturally immortal.

She was a good actress, but there are a lot of good actresses. Bacall was a great event - a look, a voice and a presence. And in combination with Humphrey Bogart, she shared the kind of screen magnetism that legends are made of - and marriages, too. The phrase "Hollywood royalty" is liberally tossed around, often in praise of pretenders. But Bacall was true Hollywood royalty, a movie star from the days when the studios made actors into glamorous demigods.

Bacall had her first success as a model, but she'd always wanted to be a screen actress, and she got her chance in 1944, when she was discovered by Howard Hawks and cast opposite Bogart in "To Have and Have Not." She was just 19, almost a kid, sharing the screen with the star of "Casablanca," who was almost a quarter century her senior.

Understandably, she was terrified, and so, to steady herself, she kept her head down and looked up. Luckily, that posture didn't register as fear or diffidence but as erotic confidence, and "The Look" became her sultry trademark. Bogart and Hawks, both married at the time, took an interest in the young woman. Bogart divorced his wife, and Bogart and Bacall married and stayed married until Bogart's death in 1957.

They made three more films together, all classics. For "The Big Sleep," they reteamed with Hawks, with Bacall memorable as a spoiled, wealthy vixen. "Dark Passage," (1947) the least renowned of the Bogart-Bacall films, is a special treat for Bacall fans: Much of the film is shot as through the eyes of Bogart (as a convict who has undergone plastic surgery). This means the camera's scrutiny is almost entirely on Bacall, who is simply stunning - truly at her most beautiful.

By "Dark Passage," Bacall had also come into her own as an actress. There is none of that self-conscious, audacious precociousness that we see in her work in "To Have and Have Not" and "The Big Sleep." She is fully arrived. John Huston's "Key Largo," which followed in 1948, is the best of the Bogart-Bacall's, with Bacall successfully playing against type as a virtuous war widow.

Bacall was never a work horse. At the height of her career, when others were making three or four movies a year, Bacall chose to work once a year, if that, and strictly in quality films. She sat out 1949, made two films in 1950 (including "Young Man With a Horn," one of her best non-Bogart showcases), then took off the next three years. By the time she made "How to Marry a Millionaire" (1953) - a box office triumph - she had such a mature vibe that she seemed more like Marilyn Monroe's aunt than her contemporary. In fact, she was less than two years older than Marilyn.

But then, when we're talking about Bacall, at least as a screen actress, we are really talking about five or six years, followed by a 64-year epilogue. She made her contribution to civilization, and all the rest was extra - all very welcome, but not necessary to sustain the legend, as the legend was secure. In 1970, she won a Tony Award for "Applause" and in 1981 she won another Tony for "Woman of the Year."

In 1986, she quit smoking, which means that she waited until she was already five years older than Bogart was when smoking killed him. But that's how that generation did things, and, fortunately, she got away with it.

In Bacall's later years, she appeared sporadically in films, including "The Mirror Has Two Faces" (1996), for which she was nominated for a supporting actress Oscar. She didn't win that, and shouldn't have, but in 2009 she won an Oscar that she most certainly did deserve, for her contributions to the screen.

It should also be noted that for years Bacall was the voice of "Fancy Feast" cat food, and that just by saying "Great taste is easy to recognize," she made a gelatinous mass of spleens, lungs and various other organ meats sound like the height of sophistication. To this day, I still can't buy Fancy Feast without hearing Bacall's voice in my head, applauding my refinement. It's a wonder I haven't tried eating it myself.

And so we say goodbye to Lauren Bacall, as she joins, many years later, all the people she knew, such as Harry S. Truman and Truman Capote, and all the people in her exalted circle, such as Huston, Hawks, Noel Coward, Richard Burton, Frank Sinatra, Spencer Tracy and, of course, her husbands, Jason Robards Jr. and Bogart. It's a sad goodbye, but not a painful one this time. This was a long life and a triumphant one.

Latest from the SFGATE homepage:

Click below for the top news from around the Bay Area and beyond. Sign up for our newsletters to be the first to learn about breaking news and more. Go to 'Sign In' and 'Manage Profile' at the top of the page.